unrealfandomcom-20200223-history
Link Gun
The Link Gun is a projectile/hitscan weapon appearing in Unreal Championship, Unreal Tournament 2003, Unreal Tournament 2004, Unreal Tournament 3, and Unreal Tournament 4. __TOC__ Overview The Link Gun is a weapon that fires green plasma bolts in rapid succession. Although the bolts themselves travel slowly compared to most of the other guns, this weapon has a fast rate of fire. The weapon appears in Unreal Tournament 2003 and 2004 replacing the Pulse Gun. The Link Gun's primary fire launches plasma projectiles at a rapid rate, similar to the Pulse Gun, and the secondary beam can be used to "link" with another player also using a link gun, that player gaining a damage bonus. The secondary fire also repairs nodes and vehicles as well as reducing an opponent to a skeleton, if the beam deals the final blow. It reappears in UT3 and again in UT4, with the same role. Unreal Championship ;Primary Fire :Rapid-fire charged plasma. ;Secondary Fire :Charged plasma beam. The Link, as it is called in Unreal Championship, is virtually the same as the Link Gun of Unreal Tournament 2003. Only the weapon appearance and sound differs, although the ammo used is the same. Unreal Tournament 2003 ;Primary Fire :The Link Gun's primary fire projectiles are normally green, and while their initial speed is slower than that of a rocket, they speed up to four times that in under a second. The usefulness of the primary fire is generally limited to close-to-medium range, since their slow initial speed makes them easy to react to at longer range. However, with a fire rate of 5.5 shots per second with 30 damage per shot, at close range and especially against stationary targets the Link Gun primary fire is one of the deadliest weapons considering its raw damage rate (165 damage per second). ;Secondary Fire :The secondary fire tends to be more used than the primary fire. Though the green wiggly beam is of limited length, since the beam is hitscan it is far more reliable within its range. 5.5 times a second the beam checks for a hit, and will do 15 damage to a target, which comes out to be 82.5 damage per second. While it can be hard to master, in the right hands the beam is more deadly than the primary fire, especially considering its lockdown effect: whenever the beam hits, it pushes the target slightly, making it difficult for the target to dodge out of the way, effectively locking the player down. ;Linking :If a teammate is linked up to you, the teammate's link beam assumes the color of the team, and both the primary and secondary fire of your Link Gun become yellow and do extra damage. If there are n'' people linked up to you, the damage on the primary fire is multiplied by 1 + ''n, and the damage on the secondary fire is multiplied by 1 + (0.5 × n''). For example, if two people are linked up to you, primary fire will do 90 damage per shot, and secondary fire will do 30 damage per hit for 165 damage per second. The primary projectile speed also increases with the number of links. Unreal Tournament 2004 As with most UT2003 weapons, the UT2004 version of the Link Gun has remained largely the same, though it has received several subtle changes. The Link Gun's appearance has been altered. The primary fire now consumes 2 ammo per shot, and the secondary fire has a greater fire rate of over 9 hits per second, although the damage per hit has been decreased to 9 such that its rate of damage has been unchanged. In compensation for the increased ammo consumption rate, the ammo capacity of the UT2004 Link Gun has been increased. In UT2004, players can also repair vehicles and Power Nodes with the alternate fire, greatly increasing the utility of this weapon in Onslaught, Vehicle CTF, and certain Assault maps. The heal amount and speed of most vehicles and turrets can be configured by Level Designers, but due to the default settings, generally, the speed is quite low for the automatic floor and ceiling sentinel turrets in Assault maps. Note that linking up is much more efficient than in UT2003. With n'' links your primary fire still has a damage multiplier of 1 + ''n, but the beam damage or healing scales up by 1 + (1.5 × n). This basically means you can build/heal nodes much faster if you link together instead of separately aiming directly at the node. An example: Two players separately aiming at the node heal it by 2 × 82.5 = 165 points per second. If one of the players linked to the other instead, the combined healing would be (1 + 1.5) × 82.5 = 206.25 points per second. The same example applies to healing vehicles or firing the beam at enemies. Unreal Tournament 3 ;Primary Fire :Fires white, hot plasma projectiles. The rate of fire appears to have been significantly increased, however, it does a little less than half the damage to compensate. ;Secondary Fire :Fires a beam. This beam is team-colored when healing vehicles or power nodes. When attempting to heal a fully intact vehicle or node, no ammo is consumed. Note that the vehicle healing rate in the infobox is a theoretical value. Due to rounding errors after down-scaling individual "health chunks", the actual healing rate probably is much slower, maybe around 5-10/s. Players wanting to combine the power of their Link Guns simply move closer together to create a kind of "power grid". Power boosts are received automatically from any nearby equipped Link Gun and any of its own links. A simple power grid with only one other Link gun boosts beam and projectile damage by 50%. If the grid contains at least two other Link Guns, beam damage output is doubled. Link Gun power grids with more participants only make the grid more reliable, but do not provide further damage boosting. The maximum distance between two players for establishing a link is 160 UU, but Link Guns "route" their linked power to all other Link Guns, so not all players have to stay within that small space. Unreal Tournament 4 ; Primary fire : Rapid fire projectile with a moderate travel time. Good for locking down narrow spaces. Will overheat with continuous fire. ; Alternate fire : Limited range beam that can pull enemies and team mates. Good for tracking moving targets. Tips and tricks Unreal Championship The Link Gun is not a weapon of abuse for multiple reasons. The maximum ammo capacity is pretty low for a weapon with high rate of fire. In any team game, if you want to take down an enemy while a teammate is around- be it another enemy or an ally with a Link Gun, the Alt-Fire might connect with wrong bot. Those wasted milliseconds could be a game changer, for the worse. Gallery LinkGun-UC.jpg|UC Link Gun and ammo LinkGun-2003.jpg|UT2003 Link Gun and ammo Linkgun.jpg|UT2004 Link Gun !UT3-ConceptArt-LinkGun.jpg|UT3 Concept Art Unreal Tournament Link Gun guide|UT4 Link Gun guide Fragging with Zaccubus UT Tutorial how to aim primary link|UT4 Link Gun primary aiming guide External links and references See also *Pulse Gun